Tag Archives: crochet

Another market stall

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Markets

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

Saturday it’s the big one. The Surbiton Festival 2011 market stall. The one day event in Surbiton when roads are closed, the Mayor of Kingston does the opening ceremony, marching bands march and street entertainers entertain. It’s a biggy. Apparently there are “over 100 stalls” – I’m number 58 so at least 58 stalls. Wowzer.  

Last year the Surrey Comet quoted David Randal as saying there were about 25,000 people!!!!!

(Image from Surrey Comet)
 
Hubby and I are really looking forward to Saturday. Even if I don’t sell anything it’s going to be a very fun day. The Grand Parade will be marching by in front our stall at 12 noon, and the entertainment is taking place a couple of meters from us from 10 am to 4pm.  As stall holders we have free parking for the day as well. Bonus!
 
Luckily I still have all my stall things ready from the Merton Abbey Mills market so preparation won’t take long. All I have to do is remake a couple of price tags, iron the table cloth and glue broochpins onto a few brooches. Easy.  

Something else I’m really forward to is meeting Kelly from Maple Village WI who invited me to have a stall at their Christmas Fayre on 19 November, way back in June. This year will also be the WI’s first year at Surbiton Festival. Their stall is on the other side of the entertainment area so I’m hoping to pop round and say hi (and maybe buy a cake or two – supporting the local community and all that ;-))

Keep an eye on the crocheTime Facebook page for updates and photos during the day – that’s if I’m not too busy selling all my clocks!

 

Crochet jewellery, proper jewellery

20 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Etsy, My ramblings, Other people's crochet

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Lots of people make crochet jewellery.  I had a go with amigurimi balls that I threaded through ribbon. I’ve bought crochet earrings from FR33na on Etsy. Crochet jewellery are cheap and cheerful. Right? Nope.

WhiteFly, an Etsy seller from California, takes vintage crochet and casts it in sterling silver or gold! Gold people!

When I first saw the top photo on Pinterest I thought, just like the person who originally pinned it, that it’s grey yarn, or metallic yarn at the most, stiffened with fabric stiffener and shaped into a cuff. How wrong were we?!

This item is cast from real vintage lace in Sterling Silver, then plated with a thick coating of 14K gold. Every intricate detail is evident in the metal.

It is stunning to wear, a show stopper with any outfit.
Please note I cast all my items from an actual piece of lace, I use only the highest quality vintage lace and I can only make a limited edition.

Flexible to fit all sizes, stiff to hold it’s shape. Very comfortable to wear. Fit size is a standard 7″ wrist circumference.

Available in 14K gold for $6,000. Please contact me for a listing if your interested.

Have you ever seen anything so exquisite and unique?!

If you want to know more about Whitefly, bikudesigns did an interview with her on her blog. You can read it here.

Crochet jewellery will never be the same again. Suddenly my amigurimi balls on a ribbon seems very drab.

Free People crochet

16 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in My ramblings, Other people's crochet

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

These beauties, and lots more, are available at Free People. Truly beautiful!

Carnival Crochet Maxi

Avenue West chemise

 FP Spun Eighty Stage Crochet Dress

I love the idea of adding a crochet edge to the sleeve of a floaty top, and the circles at the bottom of the long skirt is really something. (I would prefer a longer lining though…)

I wonder of the Eighty Stages dress really had 80 stages in the making of it – quite possibly if you look how many seperate crochet parts there are to it. This dress makes my Identitiy Crisis blanket look like a hook in the park!

Dorothy & Theodore is live!

15 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in My ramblings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

You may recall that on the 8th of August I told you about the brand spanking new online boutique, Dorothy & Theodore, that asked me to sell crochet clocks on their website. Well…. the site is live! Please go have a look at all the beautiful, hand-picked, hand-made items for sale.

Dorothy & Theodore is an exciting online shopping boutique created specifically for parents who do not wish to wholly compromise on style in order to accommodate the needs and wants of their children.

The aim of Dorothy & Theodore is to provide a single place where you can find beautiful and practical products which meet the requirements and desires of both parent and child, as well as some truly special products to commemorate the arrival of a child, their christening, first birthday or other important occasions.

Every product we select to represent has been hand chosen by us, and many of them have pride of place in our own homes. We hope that you will love them as much as we do.

Apart from clocks  – three designs of which are exclusively available on Dorothy & Theodore – I also sell fleece blankets with a crochet edge on the site! I really really really love making these blankets – in fact, a tiny bit more than making the clocks.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Depending on how well the blankets sell I may expand the range to include pram sized blankets, and also do the fleece in other colours, or even patterned fleece – all with a crochet edge of course.

But enough about me: please go have a look at the brand new Dorothy & Theodore website! www.dorothyandtheodore.com.

Identity crisis blanket

02 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Okay, so I have this blanket that I’m working on….. since November 2009!  It’s coming up for its third Winter as a WIP. That’s just wrong man! The blanket is meant for a our double bed. Double Bed. No baby blanket or even single bed blanket  for me to try as a first crochet blanket. Nope, I go big! Double bed big!

The blanket has gone through some life changing events in its lifetime. I started off using Lion Brand Yarn’s Spicy Delights Afghan pattern (you will have log into their website to find the pattern) and I used Biscuit & Jam’s Random Stripe Generator for the colour sequence. The pattern is very easy to do – just shells of 5 dc, with no chain in between the shells. Later I realised that the omission of the chain between shells sort of pulls down the rows into each other so it doesn’t grow as quickly as you would expect. If you look at the slideslow below (a.k.a. timeline of the life of the Identity Crisis blanket) you’ll see what I mean.

I did 72 rows of the blanket in its first Winter and gave up. I was hooking and hooking and hooking but it just looked like a very big scarf. So I packed it up and started again in May 2010.

This time I planned on doing a granny square version of the Babette blanket in the middle. I made up loads of 2 round, 4 round and 6 round grannies. I attached a row of 4 round grannies to kick off the Babette and then I packed it all up. Again.

Last week –  year no. 3 – I got the blanket out again and decided that I actually like the look of 4 rounds grannies neatly arranged in a row. By this stage the poor blanket started off as a proper Spicy Delights Afghan, had a brief spell as a granny square Babette, and now it’s actually going to end up as 97% Spicy Delights blanket and 3% granny squares. Can you see where I got the name “Identity Crisis blanket” from?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

So here is what I will be doing. No really. This is it:

72 rows of Spicy Delights pattern, a row of 4 round grannies,  20 rows of the Spicy Delights pattern, a row of 4 round grannies (that’s where I’m up to now), 20 rows of the Spicy Delights pattern, another row of 4 round grannies and then end off with 72 rows of the Spicy Delights pattern.  

Then I have to weave in all the ends.

And add a border.

This may take a while….

Crochet flowers pattern as seen in Mollie Makes

23 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in My ramblings

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

, ,

I adore crochet. I adore flowers. I adore bright colours. Ergo I totally freaked out when I saw the cover of Mollie Makes issue 3!

Luckily I am already subscribed to this fantastic magazine so I have the pattern for the flowers. However…. if you don’t have Mollie Makes magazine lying around, but would love to put hook to wool for one of these lovely flowers designed by Annie of AnnieDesign, you can visit The Guardian’s website for the pattern tutorial! How cool is that?! Just visit The Guardian’s site here.

Spreading the crochet love, one link at a time.

Crochet rugs

23 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Etsy, My ramblings, Other people's crochet

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

,

This morning I saw I love pom-poms’s post about the amazing Nona Pepa rug. It’s the first time I’ve seen this amazing flowery rug by Natalie Pepe.  Can you imagine how many hours must have gone into making and attaching all those tiny flowers?!

 

This rug reminded me of another rug I saw on Pinterest. This time it’s a granny square rug by Kasthall called Karin. Here the grannies are printed on the wool of the rug. Far less work  than crocheting every granny square, and just as amazingly beautiful. Isn’t it amazing?!  It’s named after the designer’s grandmother who loved to crochet.

Lately I’ve also been seeing a lot of big doilie style crochet rugs. If I had a bigger house I would definitely make one. In ihanitse’s Etsy shop (ihanitse is Finnish for “made by myself”) you can buy ready made rugs, or buy the pattern from the designer to tackle your own – using a size 6 hook and super chunky yarn. Isn’t it just beautiful?!

Now that I lay down the groundwork (see what I did there?) High Five to walking on crochet!!

 

Ola, I’m in Spanish!

18 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in Etsy, My crochet, My ramblings

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

So yesterday I spent the whole day retaking all the photos for the clocks currently in my Etsy shop. Yup, I retook them all. I did this on advice from an Etsy guru, Amity, who said that I need to make my photos more crisp and “clean” so that magazine could pick up on the crochet clocks and use them in features, which would generate more sales.

I’ve always been hanging my clocks against my kitchen wall, which is painted a very light green, in order to take photos for Etsy. The photos were fine and I still got a lot of Favourites and Treasury finds using them, but I needed to perfect them, hence following Amity’s advice.  I have to say Amity was right! It made a huge difference and it wasn’t even hard to do. I went outside and lay the clocks down flat on white hardboard. It was an overcast day which makes for perfect photos – no harsh shadows, and no glare. Perfect for Etsy photos.

Apart from updating my current listings, I also listed two new clocks: a blue and purple granny

and a jumbo circles clock in shades of green. This bad boy is 45cm diameter!

Guess what happened then… I got an email from Ingrid Valls saying that she has featured my three granny square clocks (therefore including newly listed blue granny square clock) on her Spanish blog lastejeymaneje.blogspot.com, which according to Google Translates means “The Weave Endorsements”. How cool is that?! One day on Etsy and the blue clock is picked up by a blogger! Hooray for Amity!

Ingrid’s blog features amazing crochet finds. You should really go have a look! I’ve added a link to the blog in my blogroll for easy clicking.

I was especially blown away by John Hamilton’s crochet faces. Thanks Ingrid for introducing me to an amazing artist and of course for including my grannies!